SANTA CATALINA IS an island retreat off the coast of Southern California. During the past 7,000 years, the island has been inhabited by a fabulous cast of characters: Native Americans, smugglers, gold diggers, pirates, Union soldiers, missionaries and movie stars. More than 500 films, commercials and TV shows have been shot on Catalina. Since 1919, the Read More
Sailing Long Winded
LAST JUNE, my fiancé Josh and I settled on our new home together. Except this home wasn’t at our preferred location. And this home wasn’t a house. We just bought a new-to-us 1981 S2 9.2 center cockpit sailboat, named Sur la Mer. We got her from her second owners in Forked River, NJ, just off of Read More
Dry Tortugas – A Grand Adventure
CRUISING TO THE Dry Tortugas National Park by boat can be the most challenging part of this amazing destination. Locals warn about two seasons: Winter Storm (December-March) that features high winds and rough seas, and Tropical Storm (June-November), that features more of the same. April and May are known to be delightful. We’d talked about Read More
Homeschool Daze
AFTER 10 YEARS OF planning and preparing for the adventure of a lifetime, we cast off from San Francisco aboard our 33-foot sailboat named Chewbacca. Our crew consisted of me, my husband Bruce, and our five and seven-year-old daughters. When we embarked on our first offshore passage as a family, I should have been giddy Read More
Kodiak Island, Alaska – Cruising with Members
Days after returning from a trip to Kodiak Island, Alaska, I experienced an uncontrollable urge to stop the car whenever I glimpsed something red in the bushes along the side of the road. This curious habit developed because of the little raspberry-like, orange-colored salmonberry. We found our first of these miniature grape-shaped globes while hiking Read More
No Hard Feelings Cruise
ABOUT 30 MEMBERS of England’s Royal Lymington Yacht Club (RLymYC) joined the Sailing Club of the Chesapeake (SCC) in September 2019 for a taste of Chesapeake Bay cruising. Altogether, 78 sailors on 20 boats enjoyed some of the best fall cruising the Chesapeake has to offer — good winds, perfect temperatures, cool nights on the Read More
Old Saybrook, CT to Gardiner’s Bay, NY
THE CONNECTICUT RIVER, one of only 14 American Heritage Rivers, is the longest river in New England, beginning north of the Vermont/Canadian border and ending its flow more than 400 miles later in Old Saybrook, CT, where it spills into Long Island Sound. The estuary at the mouth of the river is graced with grassy Read More
New England Seaport Sampler
When the Puritans set sail in 1620 to flee religious persecution in England, their long journey across the Atlantic was rewarded with a place more beautiful than they had imagined. As those travel-weary settlers exited the Mayflower, they were greeted by one of the most magnificent coastlines in North America. Timber-rich mountains reached down to Read More
Block Island Memories – Cruising With Members
For many reasons, Block Island, RI, is the hailing port on our boat, Tapestry. Since the 1960s when my parents took the ferry over and stayed at Ballard’s and later at The Surf … to 1970 when my boyfriend and I, newly in love and still in high school, biked from the ferry to the Read More
Casco Bay Cruising Itinerary
“If once you’ve slept on an island … you’ll never be quite the same.” So goes the idyllic poem by Rachel Field. Nowhere is that truer than on a coastal island in Maine in summertime. Casco Bay in Portland is dotted with more than 200 beautiful islands, some more inhabited than others, particularly Peaks and Read More